Press Releases

China is the world's largest contributor to annual growth in the demand for ecological resources and services, and has been for the last five years for which data is available, according to Global Footprint Network, a leading expert in natural resource accounting.

Russia ranks fourth in the world among nations with the most biocapacity and is uniquely positioned as the only nation with increasing biocapacity reserves, according to a report released Oct. 13 by WWF-Russia in Moscow. Press Release in Russian

A new study published in Science today and co-authored by Global Footprint Network’s researchers reveals that, despite some progress, more needs to be done to reach an internationally agreed set of biodiversity targets by 2020.

Humanity’s demand on the planet is more than 50 percent larger than what nature can renew, jeopardizing the well-being of humans as well as populations of mammals, birds, reptiles, amphibians and fish, according to data released today by Global Footprint Network, WWF and the Zoological Society of London.

The E-RISC, or Environmental Risk in Sovereign Credit Analysis tool can be used to incorporate natural resource risks into sovereign credit risk assessments. Investors want to better understand emerging risks in the bond market, the report said, because concerns that debt levels in Europe and the U.S. have shaken the perception government bonds are risk free.

Business Week, London, UK, November 19, 2012

Articles by our staff

"Climate change is about people," Pati Poblete, Global Footprint Network Asia regional director, asserts while reflecting on the Philippines' Typhoon Haiyan. She emphasizes that the state of California can continue to effect positive change as a leader in climate protection and adaptation.

Environmental risks are potentially large enough to affect countries’ economies in ways that could influence their willingness or ability to repay sovereign debt. In addition, these risks vary widely across countries, including countries whose current credit ratings suggest similar levels of sovereign risk.

Katsunori Iha, Research Economist, featured in Science Links Japan.
Global Footprint Network announced that “Earth Overshoot Day” this year fell on September 27th, the day when human demand exceeded the regenerative capacity of the natural biosystem in a year. This means that we will maintain “ecological debt” with three months remaining to the end of the year. The indicator used is derived from the Ecological Footprint analysis, a method that is fast gaining attention in recent years. Here, I would like to give an overview of the Ecological Footprint analysis, and the significance of what it analyses, “Earth Overshoot Day”.
Read articles in French; Japanese; Chinese

Alessandro Galli, Global Footprint Network's Senior Scientist, featured in the Commonwealth Ministers article.
In 2002, leaders of the world’s governments, recognising the threat posed by the high rate of species declines,
committed to significantly halting the rate of biodiversity loss by 2010. Yet, a 2010 study by Dr Stuart Butchart
and others in the journal Science shows that leaders have failed to deliver on these commitments and have instead
overseen alarming declines. In this article the author considers the urgent new initiatives to contain and reverse
these global losses. (more...)

Is America on its way to becoming a boiled frog? The hypothetical boiled frog is a useful metaphor for a very real problem: the difficulty of responding to disasters that creep up on you a bit at a time. And right now, both the economic and the environmental frogs are sitting still while the water gets hotter.

Uganda will lose its entire forest cover in the next 50 years if the government does not embark on immediate efforts to halt rapid deforestation. Forests and tree planting can help mitigate the effects of global warming by increasing carbon storage and cutting greenhouse gas emissions.

Well, another Earth Day has come and gone. And amid all the articles and blogs, symposia and TV specials about all the things we can do to save the planet, once again it was hard to find any substantive discussion of the single biggest threat to the environment. Namely, the staggering rise in global population.